MARK SIMPSON.com

It seems that Adam Sandler is striking a blow against the American Phalliban - in his next movie he tries to out-Speedo Daniel Craig.

Looks like he’s succeeded, at least waist-down.

All in all, taken in both hands and examined admiringly, even though it’s made of plastic it’s almost enough to make me forgive him his last outing: ‘I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry’.

Well, almost.

By Mark Simpson, (The Guardian, 8 Aug 2007)

The Phalliban, America ’s killjoy campaign against the male body’s, er, maleness, strikes yet again.

The 2008 Fire Department of New York Calendar of Heroes, the eleventh in series of snaps of buffed young firemen stripped to the waist which produces mass hysteria on the streets of NY on its release every year - along with large amounts of cash for the FDNY - will be the last.

Why? Because it might make the good people of New York think of firemen’s hoses.

Calendar coverboy 22-year-old Michael Biserta (above) has caused a scandal because he briefly got his semi-erect hose out in the video ‘Boys Gone Wild’ in 2004 - some time before he even joined the FDNY.

For the sake of research, you understand, I’ve viewed the clip (it’s because in the Net Age images never go away that this scandal has happened). And let me just say that Biserta’s fire-fighting equipment will have no trouble extinguishing the tallest flames.

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta is not impressed, however, and has ordered the scrapping of future calendars. Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes, himself a former fire commissioner (and, judging by his double entendre, also an avid Are You Being Served fan) agrees, telling the press straight facedly: ‘You can’t allow anything that tarnishes the reputation of the people on the job.’

Not being American, I’m not sure how the fact that a fireman flashed his large fire axe to consenting adults before he became a fireman tarnishes the reputation of the people ‘on the job’, or anywhere else.

Unless you’re just jealous. Or penises frighten you. (Admittedly, Biserta’s is slightly scary.)

And, Captain Peacock, isn’t a spot of polishing, French or otherwise, the usual way to deal with tarnishing?

I could understand if the FDNY was worried that Biserta’s hot body might be starting more fires than it puts out. Instead it seems like just another example of the puritanical American Phalliban trying to turn back the commodification cock that American consumerism started ticking. In the UK its difficult to imagine that a topless fireman calendar would be banned because one of them had once got their big pump out on video. Instead, they’d probably be given their own TV show. Over in France, the Dieux Du Stade calendar featuring starkers professional rugby players covered in baby oil with their balls out sells like hot croissants - and no scandal erupts.

The US clearly has a different attitude towards the male member, even if many people are convinced it’s currently led by one. Recently the city council in Kaiser , Oregon was forced to promise to remove some traffic bollards because people complained they looked ‘too much like penises’. In other words, bollards. During the filming of last year’s Superman Returns the biggest preoccupation was how to keep Superman’s Spandexed bulge from… bulging.

This year the posters for a film called ‘Pride’ about Philadelphia ’s first black swim team were nearly banned by the hawkeyed American Motion Picture Association because they were convinced that the package of one of the black swimmers in the background had been ‘digitally enhanced’. (It hadn’t, and it wasn’t even particularly ‘proud’.)

I realise that post 9-11 the FDNY has been sanctified. That they are now all ‘heroes’. But nowadays amateur porn stars can be heroes too. Especially if they’re hung as heroically as Biserta.

The real problem here is that Biserta’s showing-off before he became a fire-fighter was a little too explicit. The fact the coverboy had got his actual cock out instead of his hose outed the pornolizing of the male body going on in the culture that the FDNY calendars themselves are part of. Which freaked out the old men running the FDNY who probably never liked those faggy calendars anyway.

Many of the glossy images in the calendars, like the one on the cover, are deliberately phallic and fetishistic. Look at the way a ‘pumped’ and ‘ripped’ Biserta is holding his big shiny red fire axe with both hands, over that huge butch metal clip apparently keeping his flies together.

Even the Statue of Liberty, looking on, has erected her arm - which has, understandably, burst into flames. Unlike the old grey men who run the FDNY, she’s an American who knows how to salute a prodigiously well-equipped young fireman when she sees one.

You can see that incendiary Biserta clip on Xtube here.

Tip: Donald Krolak

In the Middle Ages, sodomy was thought to be caused not by hair whorls, but by drunkeness.

As this spornographic clip shows, they were absolutely right.

The post-match beery bonding of the lovely lads of Sandbach RUFC - which, be warned, includes very male nudity, heavy petting and male-on-male snogging - made me feel faint with jealousy.

And also faintly redundant.

These straight lads’ eagerness to perform their manly love for one another in front of UK TV cameras (for an instalment of an ITV2 series last month called ‘Generation Xcess’) does away with the need for my:

• essay on hazing, in which I argued that male bonding is deeply homoerotic, but that despite this it is not a ‘gay’ thing - it’s a ‘guy’ thing

• pointing out the size queenery of straight men.

• explaining how little purchase the Phalliban has in the UK - compared to the US where it has a tighter grip than Captain Tim’s team-mates have on his ‘massive cock’

• arguing that homoerotic fantasy that Sporno advertising sells us is not entirely baseless

• responding to those who adamantly refuse to believe that straight men could get naked with one another on camera and play with each other’s dangly bits when offered lots of cash. (These ones did it for a few beers.)

Instead of all my scribbling, I just needed to take a video camera to a pub in Sandbach on Saturday night and buy a few rounds. It would have been a lot more fun too.

Funny that this should have surfaced around the same time as this spornographic ad campaign for Paris - which after the salty mantics of Sandbach RUFC now looks like a slightly coy promotion for a copycat programme featuring a less attractive, less ballsy team.

But perhaps the most ‘touching’ part of all this groping is the way this (highly successful) team of rugger buggers refuse to be embarrassed by the naughty clips the programme makers make them watch in the cold-sober light of day. Instead they seem quite proud. But then, they have much to be proud of. Especially their Captain.

Alas, I suspect that some - gay and straight - spiteful members of the Great British Public who saw the doc did their best to make these young men feel ashamed for being ‘gay’ with one another - to make them feel ashamed, in fact, for being fit, virile lads full of life, laughs, spunk and puppyish enthusiasm for masculinity. (Actually, the more I think about it, and what I’m missing, I’m beginning to feel spiteful too….)

Worse than this though is the way the clip ends before the programme does.

Anyone have the final segment? Or a better quality version?

As the completely unabashed grinning donkey-hung, bubble-butted Captain Tim says, ‘We should watch that again.’

Update: I’ve just been informed that a better quality clip is available, along with rather a lot of other athletes showing off their, er, sporting prowess, at the premium adult site: www.ruggerbugger.com

In the latest example of the prudish power of the USA’s rampant Phalliban, outraged residents of Kaiser, Oregon, have demanded the removal of some newly installed safety pillars.

Apparently they are too reminiscent of male genitalia. What a load of bollards.

Although I’m no expert on American penises, I’ve seen a few in my time - and I don’t recall any being made out of four feet of reinforced concrete. And I think I would have noticed.

I suspect the good women of Kaiser (and it does appear to be women in the report doing the complaining) are just bragging.

And if you’re talking offensively penis-shaped eyesores, humongous 4×4s like the one pictured behind the cheeky bollard - whose hefty momentum the pillars have clearly been designed to protect pedestrians from - look much more phallic to me.

The city council, eager to placate the Phalliban, plans to modify the appearance of the pillars with metal collars and chains. Though why S&M pricks should pass without comment where vanilla ones aroused a storm of indignant protest is unclear.

If this approach fails, the council has pledged to remove the pillars. Perhaps they should dynamite them like the Taliban did with the Buddhas of Banyan.

Surely though the cheapest way to disguise the phallicism of pillars like this in the US would be to give them foreskins? Or just make them wear really baggy board shorts?

Tip: Steve Zeeland

Following my recent ‘Speedophobia’ feature for OUT about the American Phalliban, it seems the terrifying outline of male genitalia is still striking fear into the hearts of our Colonial cousins - even in movies set in the tight-fit 1970s.

According to Rod 2.0 the American Motion Picture Association of America was so alarmed by the Speedo-clad silhouette of Evan Ross’s packet in a poster promoting ‘Pride’, a film about Philadelphia’s first black swimteam they accused the film-makers of digitally enhancing his, erm, pride and refused to approve it. (Ross, Diana’s son no less, is the first unclothed Speedo-wearing swimmer from left to right.)

Now, at the risk of sounding like a jaded size queen it doesn’t seem to me to me to be that big a deal. It’s definitely, reassuringly there, if you know what I mean, but not in a tremendously ‘enhanced’ way. Besides, he’s part of the background and the two men in the foreground are fully clothed. One is even wearing a hat.

So what was the AMPA thinking of? Well, perhaps they weren’t thinking but day-dreaming. The (probably mostly white) board saw a black phallus in black Speedos titled with the word ‘PRIDE’ and got all steamed up. Either way, they wanted a closer look: they demanded the film-makers provide them with the original artwork.

Remembering though the titanic trouble the makers of last year’s ‘Superman’ went to to get his package ‘not too big’, ‘not too small’ and ‘not too pointy’ - apparently it was the single most ‘pressing’ costume concern - it’s clear that whitey has to be smooth and tidy too. And wear red-alert containment pants over his kinky blue Spandex all-in-one.

Both penis-panics ‘point up’ something rather ticklish about the US phalliban - in its haste to shield America’s honour from the jaw-dropping, mind-reeling horror of the silhouette of men’s bits it merely reveals that Uncle Sam is thinking rather a lot about cock. Black and white and all the delicious shades in between.

‘Pride’ opens in the US on March 23.

The February issue of Out carries a feature called ‘Speedophobia’ in which ‘Mark Simpson undresses the tortured relationship between American men and their swimwear’:

‘You may think them practical and sexy and iconic. You may consider them the single most perfect and pithy item of clothing ever designed for the male body. You may consider them the only thing to wear on the beach. You might even consider yourself slightly overdressed in them. But if you do, it’s probably because you’re gay. Or foreign. Speedos, otherwise known as “banana hammocks”, “marble bags”, “noodle benders”, and “budgie smugglers” are apparently as un-American as Borat’s body thong.

Speedos on a nongay beach are the surest way to earn yourself angry stares, abuse, and plenty of room for your beach towel. As a result, Speedos have in the United States become a badge of gay pride and exclusion—as overt homophobia declines, rampantly overt Speedophobia is bringing U.S. gays and Brazilians together, huddling together at the far end of the beach in their Lycra.’

Read about America’s ‘phalliban’ and general fear and loathing of snugly, briefly packaged male genitalia in full at Out.com